US curtain call on cards for News Corp

Rupert Murdoch, chief executive officer of News Corp., and his wife Wendi Murdoch are driven away from Portcullis House after giving testimony to Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sports Committee, in London, U.K. on Tuesday, July 19, 2011.
Photo Bloomberg

by
Paola Totaro

Three years ago, almost to the day, Jude Law was strutting the stage in London’s West End as Shakespeare’s sweet prince, Hamlet. The film star swayed even the fiercest British theatre critics and not long after took the Bard’s great drama of deceit, intrigue and family power across the Atlantic to Broadway.

Law made global headlines of a different kind in January, winning a $US200,000 settlement in the News of the World scandal, a rather more modern tale of dynastic influence and deeds most foul. Fellow hacking victim, British MP Chris Bryant, described the payouts then as “only act four, scene four of a five-act play . . ." telling The New York Times, “it’s far from over".

For the first time,
Rupert Murdoch
was facing in the past week the very real prospect that the fallout from the nefarious practices of his now-defunct British red-top tabloid might follow him across the Atlantic, too, damaging the News Corp brand where it owns its most profitable assets, in the US.

Remarking he’d been watching the Leveson inquiry with “great interest", it emerged in Washington that Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate committee on commerce, science and transportation, has now also written formally to Lord Justice Leveson asking if he has uncovered any evidence of questionable practices in America.

“I would like to know whether any of the evidence you are reviewing suggests that these unethical and sometimes illegal business practices occurred in the United States or involved US citizens," Rockefeller wrote.

This could well be a watershed moment for News Corp, the publicly traded company with headquarters in New York. While the American committee might have kept an eye on the work of its Westminster counterparts, a five-page letter from the US Senate raising concerns that US laws may have been broken, obstruction of investigations or the bribing of public officials catapults that casual interest into an entirely new league.

Ironically, the possibility of contagion to the US was first tied to Jude Law when it was reported calls made to him by his assistant, Ben Jackson, had been hacked just after he’d landed at “an airport" now believed to have been John F Kennedy in New York. If his phone had been connected to a US network, this would have been a breach of US law.

Under US federal laws, the violation of telecommunications privacy for the purpose of “commercial advantage" carries the potential for five years’ prison and 10 for a subsequent event. London’s The Guardian newspaper, tenacious in its campaign to expose journalistic dark arts at News International, has revealed that there may be other very serious complaints from America.

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Mark Lewis, the English lawyer who has been the driving force behind the hacking victims’ campaign, announced he’s joined forces with an American legal colleague, Norman Siegel, revealing that at least 10 people have made complaints about phone hacking in the US – not just against News of the World but Fox News too.

The two stressed all are unproven allegations so far but there’s little doubt that they will be pursued with the same vigour applied by British victims.

Officials from the FBI, US Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission are already thought to be investigating whether illegal payments by journalists on its British tabloids mean News Corp breached the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which outlaws bribes to foreign officials. The company could face fines of millions of dollars and its executives could be banned from running companies.

Noting all publicly traded US companies must “exercise adequate financial controls over subsidiaries" such as London-based News International, Rockefeller asked for any evidence staff at News Corp’s New York headquarters were “aware of these payments and did not act to stop them".

US officials are also looking into whether the mobile phones of relatives of victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks may have been hacked. Rockefeller asked Lord Justice Leveson if there was evidence any Americans were among 5000 “additional potential phone-hacking victims" described to the inquiry by Sue Akers, a deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.